Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/534

 are to be read in the pages of Suë and other romance writers, whose taste it is to dive into the lowest depths of human depravity and degradation. There were some gray-haired old women, and some rather pretty young ones; but the majority were hard-featured and middle-aged, and of indescribably repulsive aspect. One gaunt Amazon had a sort of uniform coat with a white band and red cross upon the arm, and when she arrived, we were told, she wore epaulets. Madame Millière had been there, who did the honors of the Hotel de Ville, and who came gayly attired; but she had left before our visit. One girl struck me particularly. She did not look above eighteen, but may have been two or three years older. She was slender and well formed, with a profusion of fair hair, terribly dirty and tangled; whereas many of the other women, squalid and dirty as their clothes might be, had evidently taken pains to comb and arrange their hair in the most becoming manner their scanty resources permitted. Her blue eyes were large and shifting, and with the expression of a wild animal, of which she reminded me as she roved restlessly up and down one end of a room, keeping close to the wall, brushing against it as a hyena does against the bars in its monotonous, weary pacing of its narrow prison. From time to time she shot a side-glance at our gendarme, who was giving particulars about the prisoners in a pretty loud voice, and in terms which showed slight consideration for their feelings. They were such glances as might fitly have accompanied a dagger-stab. I know not what there was in the appearance of one of my companions which made some of these unhappy wretches fancy him an official person—a police commissary apparently—but they came up to him and began their tales, all pitched much in the same key. Could they be believed, they were all lambs, innocent and heartbroken; some had the regular whine of the professional